Joe Jonas: Demi & Miley Introduced Me to Weed

By ANTOINETTE BUENO

December 02, 2013

Joe Jonas gave his most revealing interview yet in a recent sit-down with Vulture, in which the 24-year-old Disney star opens up about his formerly squeaky-clean image, those infamous purity rings he and his brothers wore, and claims that it was his ex-girlfriend Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus who peer pressured him into trying marijuana for the first time.

"The first time I smoked weed was with Demi and Miley. I must have been 17 or 18," he admitted. "They kept saying, 'Try it! Try it!' So I gave it a shot, and it was all right. I don't even smoke weed that often anymore."

He also surprising revealed that he felt trapped into staying in a relationship with Demi at the time because of her well-publicized mental health/drug issues.

" ... We eventually dated for a month," Jonas says about his relationship with the X-Factor judge. "I really got to know her and got to see the ins and outs of what she was struggling with, like drug abuse. I felt like I needed to take care of her, but at the same time I was living a lie, because I wasn’t happy but felt like I had to stay in it for her, because she needed help. I couldn’t express any of that, of course, because I had a brand to protect."

Part of that brand was of course the Jonas brothers' purity rings, though Joe admitted that he didn't wait for marriage to have sex -- he lost his virginity at age 20.

"It started when I was really young -- I must have been 10 or 11. There’s a program people do in some churches called True Love Waits, where you wait for marriage to have sex," he explained about the origin of the purity rings. "We decided to take the rings off a few years ago. I lost my virginity when I was 20. I did other stuff before then, but I was sexually active at 20."

Besides also surprisingly admitting to hooking up with fans ("There were times when I definitely took advantage of the opportunities I had"), Jonas also takes a not so subtle a dig at his ex Taylor Swift.

"I genuinely don’t have any resentment against any of my exes. So I’m not going to disparage anyone I was in a relationship with -- only I might put it in my music a little bit, and hint at it, and tease it here and there, just enough for the fans and the people who really know the story," he said. "But I’m not going to openly say, 'Yeah, actually, this person is a b****, and she did this to me.' I don’t feel the need to do that to sell records."